Lyons and Campbell Ranch Headquarters

Tom Lyons was English-born, raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he worked in a foundry; he came to New Mexico about 1878 and went into mining with the Silver City prospector Angus Campbell. They sold out in 1880 for a ranch north of Gila and in 1890 moved headquarters to Gila, where Lyons enlarged an old adobe estancia into an E-shaped house with a trapdoor under his bed, against the threats that came with fights over range, water and homesteaders. In 1917 a hired gunman shot him in El Paso.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Lyons & Campbell Ranch Headquarters The one-million acre L.C. completely overshadowed other ranches in southwestern New Mexico. At peak operation, 60,000 cattle grazed mountains and grasslands stretching to Arizona, employing 75 cowboys and 100 families to ranch and farm the land from the 1880s until 1917. Englishman Tom Lyons and Scottish prospector Angus Campbell created an empire that was one of the truly great ranches of the West. Lyons built a lavish home in Gila and a mountain hunting lodge accessible only by wagon trail two days up river. Landholdings were sold after Lyon's murder in 1917, but his home, ranch headquarters, and the Catholic church he built for his family and employees still stand in Gila.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument — 28 mi
  Rooms built into five caves above a Gila side canyon in the late 1270s and lived in for about a generation, at the end of forty-four winding miles of mountain road from Silver City.

More markers nearby

• Silver City — 19 mi
• Anita Scott Coleman — 20 mi
• Old Silver City Cemetery — 20 mi
• Pinos Altos — 20 mi